


A Visit from an Archangel

by ilcuoreardendo



Series: Deus Ex Universe [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bobby's House, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Tree, Gabriel Lives, Gen, M/M, Post-Cage, Protective Gabriel, Sam Hallucinates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 18:47:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilcuoreardendo/pseuds/ilcuoreardendo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The night before Christmas and all through Bobby’s house not a creature was stirring,  except one ex demon-blood junkie who was still recovering from his time as Lucifer’s vessel and his short stint in Hell’s hot box.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Visit from an Archangel

**Author's Note:**

> A short Christmas one-shot exploring a tiny bit of my Sabriel headcanon. Originally written and posted at my [Tumblr](http://ilcuoreardendo-fic.tumblr.com).
> 
> This fic fits somewhere in my Deus Ex universe. See _Nothing Like a Little Deus Ex Machina_ for the backstory.

 

* * *

The night before Christmas and all through Bobby’s house not a creature was stirring,  except one ex demon-blood junkie who was still recovering from his time as Lucifer’s vessel and his short stint in Hell’s hot box.

Something had woken Sam.

He stared up into the dark, tracing the shadows on the ceiling. They flickered like flames.  _Flames licked over his skin, blistering, charring flesh, searing bone_.  _Smell_   _of sulfur thick in his nose_. Not a dream. Memory.

Six months since he’d been yanked out and he still got flashes of memory that were so real he may as well have been back in the Cage.   He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in months. Not that hunters ever got much in the way of sleep. But he wasn’t hunting right now, you’d think he could manage a few hours uninterrupted.

The latest juju carved into his left pectoral muscle—courtesy of Gabriel, during his last visit to check on Hell’s latest escapee—throbbed once, subsided into a subtle pins-and-needles sensation. The thing was supposed to help Gabriel keep an eye on him. Seeing as he hadn’t been more than a few miles from Bobby’s house, he supposed that meant mentally as well as physically.

Too warm suddenly, he flung the blanket off and rose. Some water, maybe a shot or three of whiskey, and he’d try for sleep again.

 

He slipped quietly down the narrow attic staircase. On the second floor, Bobby’s door was closed. Just down the hall, on the other side of the bathroom, he could hear Dean’s light snores drifting out of the closet sized guest bedroom. It was a good noise. Dean’s sleep patterns had always been erratic, but to hear Bobby tell it, Dean had managed maybe two to three hours a night during the month Sam had been….away.

Minding the creaky floorboard in the middle of the hall and the one at the very top of the landing, he hit the darkened first floor and paused in the library’s doorway, thoughts of water and whiskey drying up.

The room was swathed in shades of red and green and violet: the glowing embers of the fire, the twinkling lights surrounding the huge evergreen wedged into the corner of the room. (Dean’s idea. He’d muttered something about Christmases and stints in Hell and that someone should shoot him if this became an ongoing family tradition.)

Sam didn’t mind.

This was the first time he could remember having a tree that wasn’t a.) real, but looked like a sickly shrub or b.) made out of plastic. This was the first time the decorations weren’t pilfered from gas station miscellanea. And neither were the presents. The neatly wrapped, colorful array of packages beneath the boughs looked out of place.  

And they weren’t the only thing.

An archangel, in a black jacket and faded jeans, reclined next to the tree. The length of a candy cane stuck out of his mouth. His face, turned up to the white robed Dollar Store angel (Dean’s idea) that perched on the top of the pine, looked strangely serious. The many colorful lights wrapped around the branches cast strange prisms of color in his eyes, made them glow flat silver, molten gold.

The sigil on Sam’s chest gave a strange hot, lurch, almost like a muscle cramping, and went still.

“Hey, Sammy,” Gabriel said, voice pitched considerately for dark rooms, nearby sleepers. “Bad dreams?”

“Hey,” Sam said and ignored the question in favor of asking his own. “Thinking about the annunciation?”

A soft snort of a laugh.  “That was just a story, Sam. Designed. Engineered. Set afloat in the ears of the desperately faithful.” A pause, and then, “Actually, I was thinking about the last Christmas party I went to at the Carrigans.”

Sam paused, remembering suddenly the scent of meadowsweet, the blistering pain of an extracted fingernail. “You knew them?”

Gabriel waved a hand. “Pagan circles. Not that large. Must’ve been fifty years ago. Really tied one off. Woke up three days later in Shanghai, next to a maenad.”

He crunched the end of the candy cane, seemed disinclined to say anything else.  But he caught Sam’s eye, tilted his head to the floor next to him.

Sam breathed out a sigh, crossed the room. It seemed right to go to Gabriel, seemed right to curl up at his side in the halo of the fairy lights. He pillowed his head on his folded arm. A moment later warm fingers brushed his forehead. The touch was ephemeral, soft as the wind. Sam caught the scent of peppermint, of dark, rich chocolate, and something else…fresh and sharp like the air before an electrical storm.

Familiar. Safe. Home.

The sigil on his chest pulsed obscenely warm and he bit back a gasp, half expected Gabriel to make some joke about how Sam  _obviously_  needed to get laid if a few innocent touches were enough to set him off.  (The archangel may have pulled him out of Hell and been strangely attentive to his recovery, but he was still, often, an asshole.)

Sam turned his face up when no such joke came, raised an eyebrow and received a raised one in return.

 “Sleep, idiot,” said Gabriel, fingers on Sam’s temple. “Deano’s gonna hit the floor in three hours time demanding breakfast and presents. I’m not saving you from drowning in your eggs.”

And Sam could feel the lethargy creeping over him, settling in his limbs.

Gabriel seemed to settle into the floor, hand resting on Sam’s brow. “No dreams,” he said.

Sam closed his eyes, breathed in the smell of pine and archangel, and slept. Deep, dreamless. 

When he woke—alone, covered with a blanket he didn’t recognize, and more refreshed from those three hours of sleep than he could ever remember being—it was to the sound of his brother’s laughter at finding Sam curled beneath the tree like a child, a warm tingle from the mark on his chest, and the scent of sweets and storms lingering on his skin.  

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
